Chamber and committees

Foysol Choudhury will take us on to the next section, which is on the forthcoming legislation.

I have a final question, which relates to the evidence that we heard last week. There was some comment that although the new national park might be the called Galloway national park, it runs into South Ayrshire and other territory, too. There was a feeling that, because that is a much more populated area where there are established concerns, it is quite distinct from the Cairngorms or wherever else. In addition, there was a concern that the thinking would be that a similar arrangement would be developed, which would really not work for that area, because it would interfere and potentially undermine quite a bit of what was there.

I think that you said earlier that the consultation is about developing a proposal that will meet those challenges. Eileen, will you confirm for the record that that is your view?

Thank you. As there are no further questions from the committee, is there anything further that you want to add to the narrative that we have perhaps not touched on this morning?

Thank you for that and for the evidence that you have given us this morning, which has helped to build up our profile of the issue.

We will continue our consideration of the petition at our next meeting on 27 November, when we will hear from the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands.

Are members content to reflect on the evidence that we have heard in our private session later?

Members indicated agreement.

To pick up on that point, what will be the process that generates the independent analysis of the consultation?

This issue is familiar to the committee because petitions that address it come to us from time to time. Work is supposedly under way but it is not yet crystallised into a formal date.

Do we have any proposals from the committee about how we might proceed?

That is the easiest thing for us to consider doing. How old is Callum now?

Are there any other suggestions from committee members?

Colleagues might be slightly surprised to see me, after 17 and a half years, stand up to make a contribution for the first time in a housing debate. I have left the precocious policy interventions and half-pursued master plans to others throughout that period.

I say to the Scottish Greens that, frankly, fervour over pragmatism leads to a housing emergency. Is it not a tragedy that we are sitting here in a Parliament that is 25 years old, with housing policy wholly devolved to us, discussing today what is in fact an absolute shambles and a housing crisis across Scotland? Perhaps if I, and more parliamentary colleagues than have decided that they are interested in the subject this afternoon, had engaged on the issue in a more pragmatic and collective way, we would have made some progress.

Time and again, in health debates that I have participated in, I have heard the argument put that there is a demographic trend in Scotland that has led to an ageing population and a crisis in healthcare. That ageing demographic is also one of the uncontrollable factors that has led to housing stock not coming on to the market. That is for perfectly good and valid reasons—people have lived longer and they have lived in those houses longer.

There is also the fact that, in my lifetime, a fundamental change has occurred in the way in which people operate socially. There are far more single-occupancy homes than there were historically, and far more people are in further education than there ever were when I started out—it has gone from one in seven to nearly all in seven. That has led to a huge explosion in demand for student accommodation.

All those things are uncontrollables, which I understand we have to wrestle with. However, they have led, to my astonishment, to my small local authority of East Renfrewshire Council declaring a housing emergency, because it had, according to the Scottish Government’s figures, the highest percentage increase in households living in temporary accommodation anywhere in Scotland. I recognise directly what Willie Rennie described in his contribution, because, to my astonishment, people in my constituency are now coming to speak to me with casework issues who are in that bereft position. They have no idea where they are going to live, what they are going to do or how they will fulfil their determination to offer to their young children, to whom they are absolutely devoted, the best start in life, when they are all crammed into temporary accommodation—at times in one room—with no understanding or knowledge of where things will progress after that. We have to do far better.

It would be fair to say that in the earlier debate today we had a bit of a rammy to do with the Labour Party and its Government at Westminster, but in East Renfrewshire we try collectively, on many issues, to be as pragmatic as possible. The local authority there—a Labour-led, minority administration—has set out quite genuinely and pragmatically why we have an increase in homelessness applications in East Renfrewshire. One problem is the abolition of the local connection benchmark, which has meant that people just turn up, present and become part of an issue that that small local authority has to deal with when it does not have the major resources that some other authorities might.

The Labour leader has said that the council acknowledges that the Scottish Government has recognised that there is a national housing crisis and it has declared as much. However, that does not sit well with the removal of some £200 million in funding for the provision of affordable housing. There is not much point in recognising an emergency and then axing one of the tools that was there to deal with it.

The leader of the council has written to the First Minister, informing him of our situation in East Renfrewshire. Yesterday, East Lothian became the 13th council to declare that emergency. The Scottish Government’s own figures must surely be a wake-up call to the Government that it needs to take action. That means, as my colleague Meghan Gallacher has argued, that we have to pause the bill and redraft it as a bill that we can pragmatically work together on to achieve and which directly addresses Scotland’s homelessness emergency.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?